


Callbacks

by Aja, earlgreytea68



Series: Hays Code Love Scene [5]
Category: Shenanigans (Original Universe)
Genre: Backstory, Emerson College, Fights, M/M, Shenanigans (Original Universe) - Freeform, Theatre, UST, callbacks, eugene o'neill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 17:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11764410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja, https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: Nicholas frowns. “He had to have had some reason. It’s not like him to be unnecessarily cruel.”“I think we see him quite differently,” says Jonah.





	Callbacks

 

He’s actually having a good day until it happens. It’s a bright fall day in Boston, the Common is full of people and pets and life and energy, and even though Jonah’s not one to give into anything as silly as senioritis, well. He _is_ a senior, and god knows he’s been through enough to get here, so he’s just, he’s enjoying himself.

Except then he steps inside the Paramount and a couple of the other theatre majors shoot him glances before looking guiltily away again. Jonah usually knows why people send him looks like these, and usually, it means he’s gotten the part that everyone’s talking about. But auditions for the Emerson fall shows haven’t taken place yet. It’s possible callbacks have been posted for the community production of _The Iceman Cometh,_ but that would mean that Elliot had already chosen to cast Jonah as Hickey even before callbacks—which he’s absolutely certain Elliot would never do, if only because he wouldn’t want to give Jonah that much satisfaction.

He suppresses a smile, as he’s caught himself doing innumerable times since Elliot first told them the local theatre guild had chosen him to direct. It’s Elliot to a tee, this play—insanely ambitious, notoriously difficult, pompous, and centering on a showy, charismatic salesman who’s excellent at lying to himself. It couldn’t be more Elliot, this play. He’s going to put on the most ridiculously hipster production of Eugene O’Neill ever performed in Boston, and it’s going to be brilliant. Jonah was, after all, the only one completely _un_ surprised when the guild approved Elliot’s directorial vision for the play, because Jonah is, after all, the only one who’s actually seen Elliot’s directorial talent on display. Except, of course for Elliot, whose initial reaction had been sadness that the guild was only letting him do the three-hour version instead of the five-hour version, because _of course._   

Honestly, Jonah can’t wait to see what he does. It is a selfish indulgence, this idea that Elliot and he would be partners together on a project this huge. Jonah has his senior thesis role to be preparing for, but that won’t happen until the spring, and honestly, the chance to play Hickey is a resume-builder he could never pass up.

But there it is again, another one of those quickly-averted glances his way and then away again, and Jonah recalls that there’s another side to them, these looks—a side he became well-acquainted with after what his parents did to him. It’s the side that says people are talking about you for the wrong reasons instead of the right ones.

It’s the other side of the look that says there may be a list, but Jonah’s name isn’t on it.

The thought is like ice, cold and completely crystalline, perfectly formed.

Of course Elliot wouldn’t call Jonah back. Why would he?

Elliot can barely stand to meet Jonah’s eyes when they’re in their own apartment together. He flits, nervous and unsettled, around Jonah. He jolts whenever Jonah touches him. Whenever Jonah brings someone home, Elliot simultaneously shrinks into himself and puffs out like a threatened cat; during the last date Jonah stepped out of his room for the water pitcher and found Elliot perched awkwardly on the kitchen island, gripping the counter with white knuckles, wide-eyed and unable to stop staring at Jonah’s bare chest, all the while clearly trying to hold back the snide remarks he normally saves for the day after.

He can barely process how he feels when he’s around Jonah normally. The one time he tried to read a scene with Jonah he couldn’t even get through it. How would he be able to direct him in such an intimate part?

Jonah feels like a massive idiot. No. Jonah _is_ a massive idiot. And Elliot is... _Elliot_.

The callback lists usually get posted by the elevators, but Jonah digs out his phone to check the community theatre website instead.

 _Thank you to everyone who came out to auditions this week,_  he reads. _As you know,_ The Iceman Cometh _is extremely challenging material and this was an unusually difficult decision. We would like to thank everyone for their patience. Please find the callback list below._

Jonah scans the list, and he’s right; Elliot hasn’t put him on the callback list for the part of Hickey, which is... fine. Fine, he thinks, swallowing his chagrin.

But then he scrolls down the list of callbacks for each of the supporting characters, and... Jonah’s name is completely missing from the list.

Elliot hasn’t called him back for _anything_.

Someone bumps into Jonah and he realizes he’s standing awkwardly in the middle of the Paramount lobby, probably looking like a blindsided oaf. He excuses himself and heads into the lounge, scrolling over the list again to make sure he’s not missing something. Nothing.

Nicholas’s name, however, is at the top of the list for Hickey and a few of the other parts as well.

So that’s what the other shoe dropping feels like, Jonah thinks.

Jonah thumbs the website closed and notices then that he’s actually gotten a text from Elliot, sent an hour or so ago: _Hey, do you have a few minutes? I’m in Cutler til 3._  

Elliot sees him every day at the Eggplant; sending Jonah a text asking Jonah to initiate a conversation instead of just talking to him in person at home—instead of just giving him some fucking _warning_ —is a very Elliot move.

It’s nearly three now. Elliot will be headed back this way for their production management class. If Jonah knows Elliot, he’ll saunter up and make small talk like not a thing in the world is wrong, and Jonah—Jonah is normally fine with that. Jonah is normally used to Elliot’s careening between deliberately staged drama and deliberately staged non-drama.

Today, however, he has no idea how he might react.

“Jonah.”  It’s Nicholas. He should be off cutting open cadavers at BU, but occasionally he gets out of class early and instinctively flies back to Emerson, and Elliot, like a homing pigeon. He comes over to Jonah with a perplexed look on his face. “Have you seen the—” he registers Jonah’s expression. “You’ve seen the callback list,” he amends.

“Just now,” says Jonah. Honestly it’s kind of impressive how hurt he is. He’s supposed to be well beyond the sting of rejection over not getting a coveted part, and he had honestly thought he was inured to the litany of conflicted emotions Elliot makes him feel at any given moment. But apparently the combination of both can still surprise him.

“Have you and Elliot been...?” Jonah looks up at him. Nicholas looks confused, and it’s almost laughable how little he knows about the strange dynamic between the other two-thirds of his housemates. “You’re not fighting or anything?”

“Not at all,” says Jonah, forcing a smile. “Elliot and I are much as we ever were, I imagine.”

Nicholas sends him a quizzical look. “You don’t think you and Elliot are friends?”

Jonah does laugh at this. “I think that as with all things Elliot, it’s complicated,” he says. Nicholas starts to reply, and he’s obviously about to drill down on this statement, so Jonah heads him off. “You know why he’s doing this, don’t you?” he asks.

“Doing what? Not giving you a callback?” Nicholas frowns. “He had to have had some reason. It’s not like him to be unnecessarily cruel.”

“I think we see him quite differently,” says Jonah, and then when Nicholas double takes, clearly stung and ready to defend, Jonah adds, “But you’re right, it’s not. He probably hasn’t given a thought to me. He’s obviously doing it for you.”

Nicholas does another double-take. Really, Jonah thinks fondly, Nicholas has always been so devotedly, sweetly obtuse where Elliot is concerned.

“Me,” Nicholas echoes, sounding flummoxed. “Why me?”

“He obviously wants to cast you as Hickey,” Jonah says. “That decision gets easier if he doesn’t have the two of us reading together or against each other in callbacks.”

Nicholas puts his messenger bag down on the floor, apparently so he can fold his arms and stare at Jonah harder.

“I... what?” he says. “I can’t play Hickey. There’s like, a million lines I’d have to learn. Elliot would have _told_ me if he wanted me to play Hickey.”

“Not if he thought you’d say no.” Jonah smiles, and then wonders why the hell he’s smiling. “You know Elliot lives by the motto that it’s better to do first and apologize later.”

“That... doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in this case,” says Nicholas. “You’re the theatre major and i’m going into med school. You want me to call him and ask what’s up?”

“It’s fine,” says Jonah. “I’m sure he’ll be along shortly.”

And no sooner has he spoken than Elliot bursts through the double doors of the Paramount, whistling, always the brightest thing in the place. Today he’s wearing one of his favorites, a coral button-down open over a plaid tee, and he’s, for lack of a better word, strutting. He sees Nicholas and flies over.  

“Hey,” he says, reaching up to ruffle Nicholas’s hair. “D’you get out of molecular genetics early?”

Nicholas ducks away and grins at him, and Elliot steps immediately back in and jostles Nicholas’s hip with his own. Nicholas’s grin gets bigger. “There are no molecules for me today. No, I was just heading home, I thought I’d stop by to say hi, see if you guys wanted me to pick up anything from Whole Foods?”

Elliot blinks and then realizes Jonah is standing there, and the transformation that comes over him would be almost comical if Jonah were in any mood to appreciate it. He blanches, tries to cover it up, then realizes it’s too late and shoots Jonah an apologetic smile. “Hey,” he says. “You didn’t get my text?”

“Sorry,” says Jonah. “Busy day today.” It comes out more curtly than he intends, but he’s probably okay with that.

Elliot’s smile fades. He takes a step back, almost behind Nicholas. As if Nicholas wasn’t already between them, Jonah thinks wryly.

Jonah gets to his feet. “Well, I’m off to class,” he says jovially, and he starts to push past him, but Elliot stops him with a hand on his arm and says Jonah’s name in this plaintive voice that _absolutely_ should not affect him by now as much as it still does.

He stops and looks down at Elliot, looking back up at him with those wide worried eyes. “We can talk after if you like,” he says, and he doesn’t mean for it to sound reassuring. It does anyway, and he hates himself for it.

Class goes off without a hitch even though afterwards Jonah can’t say he actually comprehended a word. They’re workshopping scenes in the Black Box, the standard big square room passing for a theatre, and when class disperses he and Elliot linger until finally they’re alone in the empty space and Elliot is fidgeting. He ultimately takes a pose leaning against the wall across the room, possibly to steady himself.

Jonah stays where he is and waits.

“You saw,” Elliot says finally.  Jonah nods. “I wanted to wait to send out the notices,” Elliot says. “So I could talk to you about it before. The producer overruled me.”

“You couldn’t have talked to me about it last night at home?” asked Jonah. “Or during any of the numerous discussions we’ve had about the staging, or the writing, or the characters?”

“I was—” Elliot starts. “I was trying not to—” He looks down at the floor. “Nicholas was there, at home,” he mutters.

“You didn’t want him to know because you knew he’d tell you that casting him as Hickey over me is crazy.”

Elliot snaps to attention. “It’s not crazy,” he says. “Nicholas’ audition was amazing.”

“He _doesn’t want the part_ ,” Jonah says. “And I know that you’re already framing this as an adventure for the two of you to share, but is it really an adventure when you’ll have to overcome your partner’s objections?”

“It’s not like that,” says Elliot, agitated. He’s clenching and unclenching his fists against the wall. Jonah could so easily march over and pin him into place. He tears his thoughts away from that path. “You don’t get it,” Elliot insists. “Nicholas has worked so hard for so long, and this is his only real moment of freedom before he goes into _years_ of internships and grad school and residency and, and into adulthood or whatever. This may be his only chance to do something like this. And I know he can do it. You know he can do it.”

“Of course he can,” says Jonah. “But don’t fool yourself that this is about Nicholas and what he wants.”

Elliot looks up at him, startled.

“You could have cast me in any supporting role and you didn’t call me back for anything,” Jonah says, “despite the fact that objectively I have vastly more experience than anyone else you auditioned for any role. And I completely understand, Elliot, if you thought I wasn’t right for the main role. But why go for the deliberate snub? We’re not just friends, we’re _roommates_. Why do something that would deliberately cause tension between me and you _and_ Nicholas?”

“I didn’t want him to audition alongside you,” Elliot blurts. “He gets intimidated. You intimidate everyone. And I thought you’d be insulted if I only called you back for a supporting role. I didn’t want to insult you.”

Jonah laughs. “Mission unaccomplished,” he snaps.

“Jonah, I’m s—”

“Do not,” Jonah says, “Say you’re sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re not doing this for me. You’re not doing this for Nicholas. This is about what _you_ want _for_ him. You want the entire world to know how great he is, which is fine. But it doesn’t matter to you that he gets horrible anxiety, that he’ll have to use up all this precious free time learning literal _hours_ of memorization, that he’ll be forced into a grueling performance schedule during the only brief window of time when he’s not studying incessantly. And all of it matters so little to you that you didn’t even _ask him_ if it was what he wanted, you just forged ahead with this plan as though no one else mattered but you. As usual.”

Elliot’s frowning unhappily at him. “I don’t always—”

“You do,” says Jonah. “You do. Always.”

The frown deepens. “You think I’m selfish?”

“I think,” says Jonah, and somehow Elliot’s tiny miserable frown has drawn him across the room anyway, against his better judgment, “you get these schemes in your head and you carry them out with no regard to anyone else’s feelings or how anyone else might be inconvenienced. And you think, it’s fine, because it’s Nicholas, and you can count on Nicholas to forgive you and go along with whatever it is you do. But not everyone is Nicholas, Elliot. Not everyone gets away unscathed.”

Elliot says again in that small, wounded-bird voice, “Did I—Jonah, if I hurt you—”

“You didn’t even scratch me,” Jonah lies coldly, and Elliot recoils, flattens against the wall, looking up at Jonah like he really thinks Jonah is something intimidating. Jonah spares a thought for how unfair that is, how Elliot clearly has no idea how deliberately Jonah has handled him and his delicate feelings with kid gloves. For _years_. “Is that what you wanted?” he asks. “To hurt me in order to, what, deliver the crushing blow to my ego you think only you can deliver?”

“No!” Elliot said. “No, I—”

“You already make it quite clear what you think of me,” says Jonah. “You already have me right where you want me—” and then he halts, because Elliot is looking at him, really looking and listening to him for one of the rare times in all the years, and if Jonah keeps going, he’ll say more than he can take back. The expression on Elliot’s upturned face shifts into one of shock, and Jonah wonders wildly if he’s already said too much.

He knows Elliot, maybe better than Elliot knows himself. He’s not so arrogant as to think he’s never given himself away—being around Elliot, _living with_ Elliot, has been a constant exercise in not giving himself away, and he knows he’s had more than a few moments of transparency, whether or not Elliot has read them correctly.

But this, here and now, in a moment of anger and wounded pride, is not how he’s ever pictured himself confessing his feelings to Elliot. No. He reminds himself, attempting to unclench the knot tightening in his chest, that he’s treated Eliot with kid gloves all this time because he hasn’t wanted to hurt Elliot, and he _still_ doesn’t. And besides, Elliot has shown himself prone to use Jonah’s weaknesses against him to get what he wants. If Jonah handed him something like this, it would be handing Elliot a giant weapon to manipulate him with if he wanted. Jonah doesn’t want to imagine Elliot capable of such a thing, but it’s _Elliot_ , and who even knows.

Maybe that’s how this was always destined to end up, he thinks. Maybe there’s no way, despite his best efforts to hold all of this at bay for so long, that Jonah gets out of this unscathed.

But it doesn’t mean he has to hand Elliot a grenade and tell him where to lob it.

He steps back; the moment breaks. Elliot still looks shell-shocked.

“Here’s why you didn’t hurt me,” says Jonah. “I’m _used_ to you. I _know_ you. God knows I know you better than I’d like. But one day someone who doesn’t know you so well—or maybe even someone who does—is going to get hurt. And when that happens you might not be able to fix it.”

Elliot swallows. “What can I do?” he says. “How can I make it up to you?”

“I’m moving out,” Jonah says, and he hadn’t been aware that he was moving out until he says it, but then it lies there, a cold truth hardening between them.

“I don’t want that,” Elliot says. “Don’t. Jonah. No, I don’t want you to do that.”

“You don’t know what you want from me,” says Jonah. He’s suddenly exhausted. “Do you?”

He lets the question hang there, and Elliot doesn’t answer.  

There’s a world, Jonah thinks, somewhere, right now, where he tells Elliot the truth, all of the truths: that he wants, with a deep and certain hopelessness, all Elliot’s brilliance and his sharp mind and his sharp tongue and his smile and his ridiculous clothes and all the geeky obsessions he tries to hide, and his habit of slipping under Jonah’s skin with no idea that he’s doing it, and his talent and his care and his heart. That he’s afraid of how careless he’s gotten, how deep it’s grown, how it could engulf him if he’d let it. And more—that he’s afraid of what they’d be together now, afraid of how Elliot could, _would_ hurt him so easily, without even realizing it.

That he’s been waiting, holding his breath all this time, to see what Elliot would become. How maybe now he finally knows, and the answer is just as complicated as everything about Elliot has always been.

There’s a world where he asks what Elliot wants from him and Elliot finally understands the truth he’s been hiding from himself all this time.

But Elliot doesn’t answer, and doesn’t answer.

And that _is_ his answer.

So Jonah leaves. He walks out of the Black Box and downstairs and out of the Paramount and into the chilly fall evening, and he thinks about how just a few hours ago he was thinking about senioritis—as if he can afford a feeling as simple and silly as senioritis. Sometimes Jonah thinks he runs on fake emotions—as if he has a separate, real heart locked away in a Tupperware container somewhere, probably waiting for Elliot to find it and thaw it out and then curb-stomp it.

He takes an Uber back to the Eggplant and shuts himself in his room and starts searching for apartments and subletters.

It’s not the perfect day he was hoping for, but then Jonah’s days rarely are.

As far as Jonah can tell, Elliot doesn’t say a word to Nicholas or anyone about what passed between them; Nicholas shoots Jonah plenty of guarded looks, but doesn’t ask. He and Elliot avoid each other, and it’s worse than before—worse because Elliot alternates between hiding from Jonah and, when he can’t hide, doing his level best to act like nothing has changed. It’s awkward and noticeably tense, but in the days that follow, Nicholas says yes to playing Hickey, and Elliot throws himself into being overjoyed, into coaching him and running lines with him and spending hours working with him, and it’s exactly what Elliot wanted, and he uses his joy to shut Jonah out as effectively as he previously used his indifference.

Jonah keeps going. It’s fine.

He’s been wanting to move to the South End for a while now anyway. He could use a change of scene. And society. And in another few months, he’ll be gone. He’ll be off to the first of several acting residencies, and busy, and distracted, and there’ll be a whole world of brilliant, lithe theatre boys with sharp mouths and sharper hipbones, and he won’t have to think about Elliot at all.

In fact—maybe he should consider doing a residency early. He has enough credits and he could easily substitute a residency role somewhere for his senior thesis. Maybe he’ll go to New York, or Atlanta, or even somewhere overseas. He’s heard Tuscany has a fine theatre scene.

He could be gone. He could be in another world by new year’s.

He’ll leave, and he’ll finally leave Elliot behind him, once and for all.


End file.
